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Grant Morrison Attempts to Make Sense of DC Comics 52 Earths in ‘Multiversity’

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DC Comics has a long and confusing history when it comes to their many parallel universes. DC’s favorite number, 52, is coincidentally the number of parallel earths all sharing the same space but just happen to be vibrating at different frequencies. Along with Crisis on Infinite Earths, the relatively recent reboot of many of their franchises, and other, DC’s Multiverse is no simple thing to grasp and many (myself included) find it dauntingly overcomplicated.

And that’s where Grant Morrison comes in. Mastermind writer, fan favorite, and comic legend – he plans to head a new DC event series entitled Multiversity, probably because he plans to school us, big time.
This picture below, seemingly making the whole prospect even more daunting, actually makes a lot of sense, once explained. And the subsequent video? Well, that is the best explanation we yet have.

Multiversity #1 is on sale today, and at $4.99 with 48 pages, it’s the most exciting new project I’ve heard of for a long time.

9 thoughts on “Grant Morrison Attempts to Make Sense of DC Comics 52 Earths in ‘Multiversity’”

Having just re-read Flex Mentallo and his shower of sh!t Doom Patrol run, I find that Morrison peaked very early in 1988-1990 and since then has been used as a sort of street cred for very ordinary story telling by DC. There is nothing in any of this that wasn’t in three pages of Flex Mentallo plus one page of Animal Man plus a letter column in Doom Patrol. Seriously.

And as I recently tweeted the proof that Morrison is a mercenary and not a visionary and a hack not a grand auteur is in his 1989 comment “yet another grittily realistic (yawn) urban vigilante” — in other words, his Batman work is bored masturbation not brilliant reinvention. Specifically on Batman he also nicked some stuff from Big Bang Comics’ Batman pastiche – the Knight and Squire riff, the Jokeroid called the Flamingo… When a no name brand pastiche is doing it better than DC – time to put the funny cigarette down and get outside for some fresh air.

And don’t get me started on his pretensions to being some sort of magus. First, it makes my skin crawl when black magicians try and foist their nitwittery on unsuspecting or worse clamoring sheeple, and second it has no place in comicbooks outside of a Doctor Strange, Doctor Fate or Hellblazer comic. And even then.

I know I’m being negative here. I just can’t help but express how upset I am that DC is allowing Morrison to write yet another universe shaping event. I do like a couple Morrison books here and there, but for the most part I find Morrison likes to be vague and nonlinear to make the reader “think” (Batman Incorporated v.1) and bring in obscure elements of DC’s universe for “depth” (Final Crisis)

The problem I have here is the The New 52’s universe MADE SENSE! It was NOT COMPLICATED. So far in The New 52 we have hit Earth 2 and Earth 3, besides Earth Prime. Seriously, that was it. (Unless you include that one issue of action comics where Morrison took us to earth-23, home to american american versions of DC’s heroes… yes, seriously)

It was a breath of fresh air, the new multiverse was simple and fun to explore since both alternate earths were used excellently in the main story-arcs.

And now Morrison does this. He gets to bring his ridiculousness to the universe again with lasting effects. Like that time he finished Final Crisis by having Superman sing Darkseid to death. Or when Batman “died” and actually got sent back in time. Or when he needlessly calls Batman homosexual because of the Robins, a theme that doesn’t make any real sense and is more accurately represented in other books.

Morrison likes to leave his mark. I just happen to find the marks he leaves frustrating.

Yes I’ll give it a shot, mostly because the series is going to have such far reaching effects. Interesting story, one of the more easy to follow Morrison books. The plot is extremely meta which I’m assuming is there to make the book wierd, the “subplot” featuring the actual superheros is more interesting. I did enjoy that part, which was most of the story. A couple of Morrison’s “deep thoughts” were present, like the Moniter’s ship being made of “frozen music”, Earth-23 Superman reading his own comic book, and traveling to worlds populated by characters from “Major Comics”, Marvel-esque superheros.

I found it a little pretentious with the meta-storyarc but that’s probably just my natural inclination because of its writer. I’ll stick with it for now 🙂

Based on the cover it’s as close to a Guardians of the Galaxy cosmic book as they’ll manage. But with no true continuity the 52 problems will multiply…

They never seem to get that making Alan Scott homosexual when the character originally wasn’t makes a new world, unless they’re literally suggesting a cosmic force is crushing the pre-existing history of an actual previously published world. This is what makes DC comics uninteresting- the ad hoc hackery, not the different worlds, let alone the long history.

It would be akin to suggesting that each Doctor Who incarnation is literally an entirely different separate cosmos with its own continuity- first, you could but why destroy history and nostalgia and all the rest to do it? And second, what do you gain?

I sound like such a negative ass sometimes (sometimes?) but it’s only because there are examples of how to do it right everywhere- and the collective that runs these “brand farms” just have no respect for the work at all! None!

All-Star Superman and Smallville both did it better than New52. It isn’t nuclear physics. Just requires some leadership and vision – Stan Lee in the 60s, Roy Thomas in the 70s, Kirby in the 70s, Shooter in the 80s… Since then… hm.